THE SCRATCH

Winter whispered past my bedroom curtains, our bedroom curtains. Even they were sheer. You could see intertwined limbs forming ancient runic patterns against the sway of the violet lace.

I have a strange habit of glancing at the curtains now and again. He finds it distracting. He says it ruins the steadiness of the love making that he wished to acquire as if making love too had something to do with his briefcase code. Something so secretly organised that even i was denied access.

There is a strangeness in not just my staring at the curtains, but also how they responded back by swaying an extra bit as if giggling at me. Sometimes i would close my eyes but the violet would haunt even the deepest corners of my mind compelling me to look at them after all. 

Who was I making love to or being made love to?

The man in his thirties with a chiselled worked out physique and a grim orgasm face that made it very difficult for the little child in me not to giggle or atleast let out a smirk?

Or those invisible violet hands that would touch my sore spots till they ached for more soreness, never relief?

The curtains had become some sort of imaginary man that i was in love with, who knew all my weaknesses and how much i liked to be in control and let me ride till I came profusely not in sexual pleasure but the joy of feeling liberated.

Being transported from reality to the real reality is a wonderful escape from what is obvious. The smell of lilacs and lavender mixed with a bottle of vanilla essence and kept in an ancient box carved with Pegasus on top…. Unreal?

I would often imagine scraping at the wooden box trying to get whiff of that imprisoned fragrance. My nails would scratch against the carved wooden Pegasus, crafted in with the finesse of a serial killer…never a clue, just a signature.

The scratches have lessened the intensity of its sharpness and the blunt edges of the box bear the signature of my curiosity much like I bear that of Adam on my body.

He says he loves me. His nails scratch my back as a I arch in pretence for his pleasure, all the while imagining the brush of the lilac on my breasts and those violet fingers tracing my jawline.
Adam and I have been married for 13 years. It’s the year of the last supper, a surreal reminder of dark desires that might just blossom into a bavarian gentian of destruction for the both of us.

He did not want kids. 

Guiltily neither did I.

I didn't want the evidence of noncommittal love making with my husband to flatter my womb in mockery.

I loved Adam. Why would I not?

He remembered my favourite pineapple ice cream and thought my derriere looked ravishing in the tiny red dress that I had put on for our anniversary this year. He was all man.

Charming, handsome, rich, familiar….. predictable……

People say we look great together. I wonder how great I would look with the violet sheer lace wrapped around me cupping my fullness in its invisible arms ??

Mad frenzy is it??? Or am I just not in love with Adam anymore??

My mind says neither of that is true.

But my oestrogen levels and my libido say otherwise.

I remember that time i had accidentally scratched Adam’s arm while watching some silly horror movie on the net. He had the night off and I had to cancel my dinner plans with Anna, my best friend. He doesn’t get time off work a lot, you see.

Adam had screamed at me. And spelled out atrocities that wore well only in the ghettos.

I had only looked back. Which obviously called for more abuses since I was being daft.
What Adam couldn't see was that it wasn’t his language that bothered me. It was the scratch.

My mind had wheeled itself back to the loud masculine moans of pleasure and the starry look in his eyes as my fingernails had dug into his flanks, his shoulders, his ample buttocks while he lifted me off our “beverly hills” bed and rocked me against the head board, not caring about the bruises that would turn blue the next day.

His words rang in my ears as he groaned,"more Shay…more…” and deafened the chaos he was creating over a small scratch that had bruised his wrist in anticipation of a gore movie climax. I couldn’t hear him any longer. Only wild rustling of the violet curtains and the blood rushing into my ears, threatening to pound my head into believing reality, rocked my senses.

I remember sitting it out that night. The make-up sex.

I suddenly realised what was missing.

It wasn’t a mid-life crisis, or a baby, or the fact that Adam’s life had become my world. It was that my world comprised of an imaginary fabric painting my body and soul with its gentleness and love, that was throbbing to be poured into me and making all the loneliness disappear.

It was a Friday when i packed my favourite things including the bedroom curtains and the box away in a suitcase that was a little older than my marriage.

I only left a note behind. 
In his study. 
Beside a shirt that had a torn front pocket and a button missing from the carefully tailored collar. 
A flaw in Adam’s perfect life.

“Dear Adam,

I wanted to say, “my love”, yet my love has been shared and so has my soul. I leave with what love means to me. And I free you of us for thats how it is meant to be.

All your things are in place, the china, the coffee mug and the morning papers. 
You will find everything where you need them to be except for me. 
I have found a place for my self. Where I am not shared or violated by scratches that aren't etched with my love.

I leave you out of love. 

And for a reason, I leave behind a torn front pocket, a broken button and the fresh scratches on your back that have pleasured your night. 
Don't let the new ones become sore like the old ones did.

After all, What else is left between you and I, except for these scratches for memories?
In time,

Shay” 

THE SHOWER

I never liked the winters as much as I do now.

The coolness of the metropolitan air felt nothing less painful than shards of cold unglazed glass thrown in the bin after the corporate houses redecorated to celebrate a pay raise or a new account being added to another multitude of yellow files and endless sleepless nights and ever brimming cups of black coffee.

My stripper name is Blaze.

My pimp tells me I am on fire whenever i perform. Such an irony. When I say “perform”.

I waitressed for several months before bumping into Cole on a drunken night off with a handsome young English boy paying for my drinks in hopes of a hand job in the crammed loo that reeked of the stale smell of used condoms and hurried sex, mixed with adrenaline infused sweat and the battle of tongues.

Cole introduced me to a tiny apartment that had been lived in by Meg, Bunny, Lou, Angel and many others before me but they were nothing like me. I was different. Cole told me that everyday. 

I lost myself in the forbidden desire to try the unknown, the frightening yet the inevitable now that Bunny , Lou ,Meg and Angel had left behind an inheritance of skimpy lingerie and a legacy of witchcraft in handcuffs, leashes and whips.

My coming out was a royal event.

Purple.

The gentle chiffon with laced balconette cups that spilled out secrets to the viewers, the corset tightening at the dawn of my waistline reminding me with every shakily taken breath of the price riding on it and the fishnet stockings.

I hated the stockings. 

“More a whore than an angel”, I always joked.

There were men.

A lot of them. And there were lights. Bedazzling, blinding, beautiful.

As if my kingdom was ready for their queen.

And queen I was. 

The colours changed and the fabric over the years. Sometimes i was glittery in plum and gold, sometimes mysterious in aquamarine and white like a water nymph, and sometimes just chocolate, enticing dark chocolate with silken frills that teased the wild fantasies of every man present in the room.

I could see the lust lusting in their eyes, their drooling glance intoxicated by the drugs, the pills and the cheap alcohol.

They didn't touch me.

Just looked. Glimpses of what could have been was allowed in the fortress.

Yet every night, I felt more violated than the last.

Every night on my way back to the tiny loft, I would feel awkward being fully clothed as if my costumes had become part of my own skin and tearing my skin apart every night caused me unintelligible pain.

I walk back home alone.

Its been 10 years. 

Never have I loved enough to be granted chivalry and respect for what I do, for who I am.

And i have learnt to dismiss such thoughts of self deprecation as mysteries of the universe that one must not try to solve ever for what is beyond the lace and frills is but a fantasy that shall never come alive.

I pick up my daily at Joe’s and sometimes a cheap bottle of wine on my way back home. 

Funny how that pimped loft became home over the years of budding youth to experience.

I water my plants and feed the fish. They keep dying. So I have stopped naming them. 

But I do remember the very first one I got. Raphael. 

It is as if I need constant companionship from the solitude that attacks me as soon as I am back home drenched with the vile scent of another night spent in the horizon of lusty visions and being jerked off to in the middle of the night beside someone’s wife.

When the laughter and the music start echoing in the silence of the loft, filling up the empty spaces in my mind I quickly go for a shower.

I lather myself up and watch them travel downwards in circles of swirling smooth cream.

No man has ever touched me that way.

I shower twice sometimes. Thrice . … sometimes more times in a night.

Its not the smell, the breathlessness of the tight corset or the loud boisterous life that i want to drown out or wash away.

Its the blackness.

The darkness of my underworld and the colour of my skin.

The pharaohs had bestowed on me the colour of the souls of demons on Earth.

I tried washing the black away.

From my life.

From the loft.

From my skin.

And the shower runs on.

LUST

There was a forest. dark. forbidding and extremely familiar.

Fringes of burnt roses grew in one corner of forgotten weeded shrubbery almost like my grade V haircut, accidental fringes.

I did not feel pretty at all for eternity. 

But thats not the point. The story is of this forest, whose “weed-en” frames had solemn pictures of these burnt roses, never smiling. The paint of spring had worn off and an infinite potion of summer had been lost somewhere in the dark. It was a small vial of infinite beauty. Tinged by sunlight and cradled in its warmth.

Now, the roses were burnt. scared of autumn.

They wanted to wither away.

Death was poetical but not poetical when endured in excruciating pain and the disappointment of a boon succumbing to an accidental loss of the blessing in the mad frenzy of one intoxicating summer day.

But the forest had them prisoner.

They were thorny frames of timeless beauty.

Solace from the loneliness when the entirety of its being betrayed him in hibernation.

It would stare at them for hours, occasionally persuading a breeze to caress them just to hear their young giggles that grew into laughter and echoed like ripples of sexual tension through his body. The trees would shiver with want and the streams gurgle out moans of pleasure.

The forest would make advances as a doting lover by coaxing the blue birds to fly in from one corner to the other crooning away flirty love songs to the roses. He could never decide which flower pleased him the most.

The daisies with their innocent naive smiles or the water lilies with their pure conscience..

He loved them all.

But he lusted for the royalty. The roses.

The red attracted him in a way that was heart wrenching. He would be left breathless by the red, the slow decent of dew from each petal mirroring his green as if he could touch them through the dew.

He dreamt of lovers camping in his kingdom and remembered the intertwined silhouettes making strange patterns in their shadowy forms against the warm fire.

The fire burnt him a little, left a few scars but so did the roses with their teasing seduction.

He was madly in lust for them roses. But through peaks and occasional stares.

He loved it when it rained.

He imagined each raindrop drenching every part of the roses, the soft petals, the young buds….

He would crave to touch them the way the rain did. He wanted to draw sweetness from their core and caress the red tresses that haunted his nights to a tired morning that brought no peace. The lust simply grew.. and grew to an extent that he wanted to possess them no matter what.

So he framed them.

He knew already that the winters would paint them white.

But he also knew of a beautiful nightingale who would colour them red again, singing all night of love till every drop of blood from its little breast had made beautiful his roses..

It was this that he lusted for.

The smell of fresh blood from a singing nightingale’s little breast painting his dear roses red again.

The blood poured out in love invoked in him the best kind of lust.

One day when fancy made storms out of wishes.

His wish would come true too.

And maybe then he would lick the red off the roses and taste his own lust and make love to forbidden lust.

One day.
One day…

Naana

I have seen her grow up in memories of the past.

I have seen her fight her memories for too long.

I have seen her cry in front of a mirror that did’t recognise her.

I have seen her being beaten up black and blue.

I have seen her strip and not remember whether her negligee was hers at all.

I have seen her trying to drink the wrong drink.

I have seen her in the shadows crying for she was scared of the darkness.

I have seen her write and then forget what she had written.

I have seen her being flung back and forth trying to solve the mystery of her existence. 

Her name is Karen.

She died on the 4th of July 1978.

  

“Vanessa!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

“Vanessa…………………”

my name is Vanessa.

I am Karen’s granddaughter.

I have seen her.
and helped her accept death.

But she is truly strong.. for that old a lady.

“Vanessa… could you get my reading glasses.”

“yes Nana… “

I took her glasses, brushed them off and kept them on the armrest of her armchair.

I know that she doesn't read.
But i do know where she likes her glasses to be.

The Purge

There are no more lies to be told

No more love to be throttled,

Drizzle on me some more,

And i shall have you bottled.

Kept in a cellar,

Brewed for years….

Shadowed from the rest.

I shall be dancing naked, 

In sweet revenge --

For thats what i do best.

One for yesterday

one for tomorrow,

Every drop of you i shall seal..

In cryptic letters to the Almighty.

And to the darkness?

A poisoned meal.

I will bury your essence 

In the mystic caves -

While you toss and turn in your sleep...

Not one shall remember the Demon in you.

No more shall i weep.

But I shall remember

the winter months-

echoes of despair on frozen lands...

They might.

But i shall never forget.

The color of my blood on your hands…

They think i am evil,

The townspeople..

And on full moon nights i switch-

The loving wife of you by day--

And by night,

Your secret witch….

What is truly evil remains untold.

What is really said,

Is a lie...

Only the walls bear witness to the monster inside,

And darling... so do i....

The Ravens

Do you hear them not? 

Where the earth does shake?

Graves all rise, confused and distraught..

The ravens are awake!

He saw the silhouettes.

Heard the bells of doom.

Chained to his bride,

The solemn groom.

No one was at the church when it happened.

Just the crew,

And some cake.

There were lights galore,

Crystals and more,

But no one knew the ravens did wake

They stepped forward,

Fell in formal lines,

Monotony recited their vow.

The priest was bored—

But in the end,

The prick finished with a gallant bow.

And so— his job was done.

Such a performance!

The audience truly smitten.

There were tears of joy—

In every eye,

No wonder no one noticed them hidden.

They had all risen— to bless the newlyweds:

Too unaware to know——

The sacred vows were nothing but lines,

On a popular daily show.

Then came the wrath!

And then came the vengeance!

Defiance of the old by the new..

Then there was bloodshed,

Broken bones,

And the scattered heads of a few.

“We shall reunite”, they said.

“We shall conquer again,

with new vows and rules—-

And this time prepare 

To behead and destroy,

The monarchy of fools.”

“Fools who think “life” is greater than death,

Fools who repeat mistakes—-

of putting “life” on a pedestal

And not on burning stakes”

The forces promised that Death shall win,

In a battle that shall make—

Men and fools tremble with “life”

For the ravens are awake!

Mirror...Mirror

It is strange that the person who wants to act in movies doesn't watch as many movies as other people do.. i used to find it rather awkward and some-other-word that i can't quite place right now.. 

I thought myself to death and then realised  the difference between the audience and the character n a film.. if it wasn't for a handfull of authors , the world would have been deprived of a brilliant reading habit..similarly, if it wasn't for a number of directors, producers, actors, writers...the world would have been deprived of an almost obsessive addiction of watching movies..

a "watcher" is prime..

The fact that he can watch a dozen movies in a day calling it "the movie marathon" is the reason why the difference exists..

Its a li'lle difficult to articulately put in words but its he who makes our industry survive..with his constant flipping through the net for new "weed".. movies that release and are not affordable in the daily routine of a "commoner" (as shakespeare refers to the underprivileged society in Julius Caesar)..

It is them that keep us alive, the strugglers, the A-listers, and the veterans.. we turn audience to our own films knowing where the director said "cut" and where he let the camera rolling for the emotion must have seemed real enough in spite of the glycerine warming up to a tear stained face.. 

The curse of being an actor is the knowledge of what was real and what was unreal in a film.. the million dollar sets were real , yes, but only for a tight scheduled budget line, which when expired, so did the million dollar dream of the perfect mansion, the perfect waterfall and the perfect bed on which we made love..

The realisation of the unreal is such an ache that it ceases all other sensation, those of adventure, of wishes and dreams and callous beliefs in a certain red-coated, white-bearded man called Santa.. The tooth fairy seems nothing more than a fellow actor out of work trying to live up to the so very lived-in lavish lifestyle..

The flaws stand out more for an actor with every new film when her favourite contemporary actress seems to look a li'lle more beautiful on the screen-palate.. she blames not her age or the worries of the world that has lent the tired scratches on her face but the color-correction and the technical disadvantages of a small-budget meaningful movie where she was not meant to look beautiful, but real..

The audience.. the common man only sees the glorious her..lost n the lust for the woman whose his fantasy come true.. the last surviving unicorn for which he keeps yearning everyday and misses not one wrong footing.. the actor slowly becomes god.. an then desire to achieve that god.. then the sudden realisation of her favours to another man whom the commoner cannot harm in jealousy..makes her nothing more than a conniving little whore who betrayed his undying love..

We are merely pawns to our own kind..pawns to their stories built up in their heads.. a character from the film which becomes their reality.. they accomplish relationships with those make believe characters without really knowing the person..

But thats allright.. where would we be if they didn't lust for us?? 

How else would we be saved if we weren't "playing" the "damsels in distress"??

its all fair..

And for us??

cinema remains the magic mirror before which , each day, a forgotten yesteryear actress stands in her best velvet and silk.. and commands,"MIRROR MIRROR ON THE WALL...WHO IS THE FAIREST OF THEM ALL???"

and the answer's always someone else...